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I can very much relate to the feelings of vastness, freedom and sense of awe. I experienced the very same when I, as a kid, first came across Zelda. My first Ze

I can very much relate to the feelings of vastness, freedom and sense of awe. I experienced the very same when I, as a kid, first came across Zelda. My first Zelda, though, was Ocarina of Time. Despite having a SNES I'd somehow missed Zelda completely before OoT and I didn't have a GameBoy before GameBoy Color. Video games have always meant a lot to me, but Zelda is one of the few franchises which have blown my mind and made me reassess what games can be and do. (Earlier, I'd had that from the Magic Carpet games and later on I'd experience it again with Morrowind). I can also relate to the idea that understanding more about what games are and how they work can take away some of the magic. It's no longer a vast world filled with freedom. It's a computer program with a scripted story. On the other hand, having learned programming as I grew up and having worked for the last few years in the video game industry brings a whole other level of appreciation for the craftsmanship and attention to detail in some of the best games. That said, I do still feel like I can lose myself in the world of well-crafted modern games as well. All it takes is a game which is good enough to tickle the imagination and invite your immersion. It's funny, though, that the one game in recent memory which made me re-experience that sense of vast freedom and that treasured feeling of "can games do that?" was the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

elcomet 8y ago
I discovered zelda very late, as an adult, and I don't share your awe. It's a nicely designed video game with tricky puzzles, but I think the script is still very linear. You don't have much freedom (except freedom to get lost not knowing where to go to complete the quest).
- _i____ii_______ 8y ago
  Setting foot on Hyrule Field in OoT after crawling out of the cave of 90's 2D games was momentous for me as well. "I can just run around wherever?" Yes there was still a fence and you were in a yard still and linearity was still in play but it seemed there was an expansiveness and freedom to it. But if you've played Witcher 3 before OoT then it's going to seem like a prison.
  - lloeki 8y ago
    > Setting foot on Hyrule Field in OoT after crawling out of the cave of 90's 2D games was momentous for me as well Interestingly enough the experience was the complete opposite to me at this very point, it was immediately obvious I just exited the "tutorial" to set foot on a fake open world rigged with artificial gates. I suppose Baldur's Gate† (the first one and its later expansion, not the second one which I didn't enjoy nearly as much) and games like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls series spoiled me, and all I could see in OoT was, although hidden with great care, an expansion of the DooM key system under an uninspiring story. † Yes it was out one month later but I didn't got a hand on a N64 til a friend had one a couple months later. Oh, and how much I hated that controller.
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      >I suppose Baldur's Gate† (the first one and its later expansion, not the second one which I didn't enjoy nearly as much) and games like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls series spoiled me I think this is really what happens. With more experience you are better able to deconstruct the building blocks in light of past experiences. Instead of a well crafted fire dungeon, someone can see the building blocks that could easily enough be repainted with poison theme or lightning theme. Much like when one reads enough fiction they notice the tropes the author is using as soon as the author introduces them, to the point that people begin to even joke about things like death flags being raised.
- sulkie 8y ago
  I've discovered it as an adult as well and tried most of them at least for a little bit, and the only 'old' title I've enjoyed and finished was Windwaker. Characters and story were very endearing although I didn't like the sailing very much and particulary didn't like the grind at the end. But Breath of the Wild was just great. The world was so pleasant and I enjoyed being in it regardless of what else I might have been doing. The puzzles and shrines were quite nice as well.
  - btschaegg 8y ago
    Funny, I had the reverse effect. As the author, I got started with Link's Awakening, though I got stuck looking for one of the later dungeons and completed it much later than I picked it up. I skipped the one on the SNES, absolutely adored OOT, was pretty mystified by Majora's Mask, and when I could finally borrow Twilight Princess and the Wind Waker from a friend (again pretty late after their release), I finished both of them in one or two weeks. (edit: "mystified" might be the wrong word. I really like it. And finished it. It's just... strange :) ) From that perspective, BotW is a really beautiful game, the size of the world is astonishing, and the chemistry systems and their interactions are great. But the whole feel of the world feels... meh at times. The foundations are there, but the story and world design on top of it feels shallow. To start with, all the interesting characters are dead (the four guys who died in their "beasts"); except for Zelda, who you don't get to interact with during the whole game, too. The only character left with some wonder in him is Kass; I was always pleasantly surprised whenever I heard his tune. The intricate little stories you find throughout the older games have usually been replaced by some "fenced-off" substitutes (because you are supposed to find all of them with your own timing). Example: You wonder what that heart-shaped pond on a mountain looks like (from the map), go there, and then get a quest that only applies to that place. Bigger, more interconnected stories are few and far between. And the "core gameplay" has suffered, too: The dungeons are an outright joke if you are accustomed to earlier Zeldas. The shrines often hinge on a clever idea, but are usually over just when things get interesting. One exception is maybe that island (trying to avoid spoilers here). That was great. TL;DR: I still enjoyed BotW for its exploration aspects (which reminded me very strongly of Gothic), but it doesn't fill that "Zelda" niche for me. It's the first Zelda game that had me stuck before the final boss with no technical obstacle, just a lack of motivation to beat him, because the castle design turned me off that much (remember the dungeon design? Yeah). Perhaps I should have another go at it.
- aerique 8y ago
  Same here, I was mostly on C64, MSX, Amiga, Atari ST and then PC during my formative years and it seems gaming history is being written by consoles because they were more popular or because gaming got really big during that time. Checking out Zelda I left unimpressed, while I can imagine the game making an impression if one is younger and one spends a lot of time in it. But it has nothing over similar games on other platforms that were less popular and are now lost in the seas of time. Actually I felt mostly annoyed trying out some Zelda games because of endless, unskippable, stale dialog. Elite is one of the games I remember most fondly from my childhood.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    > Checking out Zelda I left unimpressed, while I can imagine the game making an impression if one is younger and one spends a lot of time in it. But it has nothing over similar games on other platforms that were less popular and are now lost in the seas of time. I'm not sure that's fair. I was a big C64 fan myself and didn't get to play Nintendo games 'til later, but there's very little on the C64 to compare to the sheer size of Legend of Zelda, particularly in the same time frame (1986). The only thing that comes to mind is Ultima IV (1985), which is an RPG rather than action-adventure. U4's story and dialog system stood alone against anything else on any system at the time, but Zelda's gameplay is far more polished. They were trying to do different things.
    - sleepybrett 8y ago
      I mean many c64 era RPGs are bigger and more impressive in scale than especially NES Zelda. However none were as clever when it came to the way it did gate-ing (metrovania style).
- Agentlien 8y ago
  Of course, everyone experiences games differently and what actually impresses or catches your interest is very personal. What amazed my with Ocarina of Time was the incredible freedom, variation and sense of scale _for its time_. It came out more than 20 years ago, so it's obviously not groundbreaking anymore. If you look at that game and don't see what amazing freedom it gives compared to more recent titles, that's definitely understandable. In case you played Breath of the Wild and didn't see why this would impress, let me explain what blew me away. There's a whole host of things, mainly centered around how the world feels very dynamic. Much of this has to do with what they refer to as their chemistry engine and how different materials react to different "elements" (wind, water, fire, heat, cold, lightning, magnetism...). It makes everything feel less like just 3D meshes with some few pre-programmed interactions with key objects and more like an immersive world. My favourite example was when I, thoughtlessly, cut down and chopped up a tree in high grass using a fire sword. The grass caught on fire, the fire spread and engulfed the wood I'd cut up, which turned into a campfire, complete with a button prompt to sit and wait by the fire. The apples which fell out of the tree also caught fire, turning into baked apples. All these dynamics bring life to the game in a way you don't often see. The environment, its climate and weather also feel more real than in most games and interact in more ways than just visually. Going to a cold area you need to plan for how to survive the cold. Very hot areas will cause things to catch on fire, which burns up wooden weapons and cooks raw foodstuffs. Rain is a serious problem because surfaces become slippery and electricity gets amplified by the moisture. Some of the dynamics in the game are very fantastical and unrealistic (e.g. the way lightning acts, striking almost exclusively metal and signalling for a few seconds ahead of time where it will strike), but that doesn't matter to me. They still help establish the dynamics and laws of physics of that world and in manages to help it come alive.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  I have both of your experiences (with different games). I played many NES/SNES games a child, and experienced much awe and wonder, felt extreme freedom in what I could do, and was just sucked into the worlds crafted as a child. But due to limited fund, I didn't experience every such game, one being the first LoZ. When I did experience in college, it didn't have the same wonder of the games I played as a child. Not just LoZ, but basically every 'missed' game I tried. I think it is just a sign of growing up and learning about the man behind the curtain with fictional stories. As a child I felt like there was more game there than really was. In Chrono Trigger I felt like there was so much story I was missing. As an adult I realize that none of what I imagined was ever coded. It didn't exist. As an adult I grapple that with fiction, it is all fake. As a child, I didn't have that weight. These days I try to capture of the magic of 'if this fictional world was real and not limited just to what the author(s) painted', but as a child that came far more natural.
indigochill 8y ago
>It's a computer program with a scripted story. There are still games which manage to create surprising experiences through emergent design, such as Dwarf Fortress. Even though one could analyze each piece in isolation without much difficulty, the interactions between all the pieces provide that sense of a complex world.
- Agentlien 8y ago
  I've tried Dwarf Fortress and I had some fun with it. In the beginning it felt impressive in many ways. There are so many little features and it's really cool with all the things (geography, history, religion, ...) which get generated. But after a while I somehow feel all the randomly generated stuff feels a bit hollow. I guess it's mainly because you generate an intricate world populated with people who display very little in terms of own motivations or agency. It's difficult to tell a story when all the characters involved seem apathetic to actually partaking and shaping the story beyond going through their daily routines and doing what you tell them to do. Sure, rulers will demand a fancy office and issue a ban on the export of some random item and miserable dwarves go berserk. But that's about it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
falcor84 8y ago
I can also really relate. For me as a kid, the biggest such effect came from Might and Magic VI. It was such an expansive game - starting from fighting cave goblins with daggers and culminating, about two months later, with fighting dragons with laser blasters while flying (in 3D). It was so incredibly liberating and empowering compared to what I was doing at school at the time, and in hindsight did a lot to pull me into a career in coding.

elcomet 8y ago

I discovered zelda very late, as an adult, and I don't share your awe. It's a nicely designed video game with tricky puzzles, but I think the script is still very linear. You don't have much freedom (except freedom to get lost not knowing where to go to complete the quest).

_i____ii_______ 8y ago
Setting foot on Hyrule Field in OoT after crawling out of the cave of 90's 2D games was momentous for me as well. "I can just run around wherever?" Yes there was still a fence and you were in a yard still and linearity was still in play but it seemed there was an expansiveness and freedom to it. But if you've played Witcher 3 before OoT then it's going to seem like a prison.
- lloeki 8y ago
  > Setting foot on Hyrule Field in OoT after crawling out of the cave of 90's 2D games was momentous for me as well Interestingly enough the experience was the complete opposite to me at this very point, it was immediately obvious I just exited the "tutorial" to set foot on a fake open world rigged with artificial gates. I suppose Baldur's Gate† (the first one and its later expansion, not the second one which I didn't enjoy nearly as much) and games like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls series spoiled me, and all I could see in OoT was, although hidden with great care, an expansion of the DooM key system under an uninspiring story. † Yes it was out one month later but I didn't got a hand on a N64 til a friend had one a couple months later. Oh, and how much I hated that controller.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >I suppose Baldur's Gate† (the first one and its later expansion, not the second one which I didn't enjoy nearly as much) and games like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls series spoiled me I think this is really what happens. With more experience you are better able to deconstruct the building blocks in light of past experiences. Instead of a well crafted fire dungeon, someone can see the building blocks that could easily enough be repainted with poison theme or lightning theme. Much like when one reads enough fiction they notice the tropes the author is using as soon as the author introduces them, to the point that people begin to even joke about things like death flags being raised.
sulkie 8y ago
I've discovered it as an adult as well and tried most of them at least for a little bit, and the only 'old' title I've enjoyed and finished was Windwaker. Characters and story were very endearing although I didn't like the sailing very much and particulary didn't like the grind at the end. But Breath of the Wild was just great. The world was so pleasant and I enjoyed being in it regardless of what else I might have been doing. The puzzles and shrines were quite nice as well.
- btschaegg 8y ago
  Funny, I had the reverse effect. As the author, I got started with Link's Awakening, though I got stuck looking for one of the later dungeons and completed it much later than I picked it up. I skipped the one on the SNES, absolutely adored OOT, was pretty mystified by Majora's Mask, and when I could finally borrow Twilight Princess and the Wind Waker from a friend (again pretty late after their release), I finished both of them in one or two weeks. (edit: "mystified" might be the wrong word. I really like it. And finished it. It's just... strange :) ) From that perspective, BotW is a really beautiful game, the size of the world is astonishing, and the chemistry systems and their interactions are great. But the whole feel of the world feels... meh at times. The foundations are there, but the story and world design on top of it feels shallow. To start with, all the interesting characters are dead (the four guys who died in their "beasts"); except for Zelda, who you don't get to interact with during the whole game, too. The only character left with some wonder in him is Kass; I was always pleasantly surprised whenever I heard his tune. The intricate little stories you find throughout the older games have usually been replaced by some "fenced-off" substitutes (because you are supposed to find all of them with your own timing). Example: You wonder what that heart-shaped pond on a mountain looks like (from the map), go there, and then get a quest that only applies to that place. Bigger, more interconnected stories are few and far between. And the "core gameplay" has suffered, too: The dungeons are an outright joke if you are accustomed to earlier Zeldas. The shrines often hinge on a clever idea, but are usually over just when things get interesting. One exception is maybe that island (trying to avoid spoilers here). That was great. TL;DR: I still enjoyed BotW for its exploration aspects (which reminded me very strongly of Gothic), but it doesn't fill that "Zelda" niche for me. It's the first Zelda game that had me stuck before the final boss with no technical obstacle, just a lack of motivation to beat him, because the castle design turned me off that much (remember the dungeon design? Yeah). Perhaps I should have another go at it.
aerique 8y ago
Same here, I was mostly on C64, MSX, Amiga, Atari ST and then PC during my formative years and it seems gaming history is being written by consoles because they were more popular or because gaming got really big during that time. Checking out Zelda I left unimpressed, while I can imagine the game making an impression if one is younger and one spends a lot of time in it. But it has nothing over similar games on other platforms that were less popular and are now lost in the seas of time. Actually I felt mostly annoyed trying out some Zelda games because of endless, unskippable, stale dialog. Elite is one of the games I remember most fondly from my childhood.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  > Checking out Zelda I left unimpressed, while I can imagine the game making an impression if one is younger and one spends a lot of time in it. But it has nothing over similar games on other platforms that were less popular and are now lost in the seas of time. I'm not sure that's fair. I was a big C64 fan myself and didn't get to play Nintendo games 'til later, but there's very little on the C64 to compare to the sheer size of Legend of Zelda, particularly in the same time frame (1986). The only thing that comes to mind is Ultima IV (1985), which is an RPG rather than action-adventure. U4's story and dialog system stood alone against anything else on any system at the time, but Zelda's gameplay is far more polished. They were trying to do different things.
  - sleepybrett 8y ago
    I mean many c64 era RPGs are bigger and more impressive in scale than especially NES Zelda. However none were as clever when it came to the way it did gate-ing (metrovania style).
Agentlien 8y ago
Of course, everyone experiences games differently and what actually impresses or catches your interest is very personal. What amazed my with Ocarina of Time was the incredible freedom, variation and sense of scale _for its time_. It came out more than 20 years ago, so it's obviously not groundbreaking anymore. If you look at that game and don't see what amazing freedom it gives compared to more recent titles, that's definitely understandable. In case you played Breath of the Wild and didn't see why this would impress, let me explain what blew me away. There's a whole host of things, mainly centered around how the world feels very dynamic. Much of this has to do with what they refer to as their chemistry engine and how different materials react to different "elements" (wind, water, fire, heat, cold, lightning, magnetism...). It makes everything feel less like just 3D meshes with some few pre-programmed interactions with key objects and more like an immersive world. My favourite example was when I, thoughtlessly, cut down and chopped up a tree in high grass using a fire sword. The grass caught on fire, the fire spread and engulfed the wood I'd cut up, which turned into a campfire, complete with a button prompt to sit and wait by the fire. The apples which fell out of the tree also caught fire, turning into baked apples. All these dynamics bring life to the game in a way you don't often see. The environment, its climate and weather also feel more real than in most games and interact in more ways than just visually. Going to a cold area you need to plan for how to survive the cold. Very hot areas will cause things to catch on fire, which burns up wooden weapons and cooks raw foodstuffs. Rain is a serious problem because surfaces become slippery and electricity gets amplified by the moisture. Some of the dynamics in the game are very fantastical and unrealistic (e.g. the way lightning acts, striking almost exclusively metal and signalling for a few seconds ahead of time where it will strike), but that doesn't matter to me. They still help establish the dynamics and laws of physics of that world and in manages to help it come alive.
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
I have both of your experiences (with different games). I played many NES/SNES games a child, and experienced much awe and wonder, felt extreme freedom in what I could do, and was just sucked into the worlds crafted as a child. But due to limited fund, I didn't experience every such game, one being the first LoZ. When I did experience in college, it didn't have the same wonder of the games I played as a child. Not just LoZ, but basically every 'missed' game I tried. I think it is just a sign of growing up and learning about the man behind the curtain with fictional stories. As a child I felt like there was more game there than really was. In Chrono Trigger I felt like there was so much story I was missing. As an adult I realize that none of what I imagined was ever coded. It didn't exist. As an adult I grapple that with fiction, it is all fake. As a child, I didn't have that weight. These days I try to capture of the magic of 'if this fictional world was real and not limited just to what the author(s) painted', but as a child that came far more natural.

indigochill 8y ago

>It's a computer program with a scripted story. There are still games which manage to create surprising experiences through emergent design, such as Dwarf Fortress. Even though one could analyze each piece in isolation without much difficulty, the interactions between all the pieces provide that sense of a complex world.

Agentlien 8y ago
I've tried Dwarf Fortress and I had some fun with it. In the beginning it felt impressive in many ways. There are so many little features and it's really cool with all the things (geography, history, religion, ...) which get generated. But after a while I somehow feel all the randomly generated stuff feels a bit hollow. I guess it's mainly because you generate an intricate world populated with people who display very little in terms of own motivations or agency. It's difficult to tell a story when all the characters involved seem apathetic to actually partaking and shaping the story beyond going through their daily routines and doing what you tell them to do. Sure, rulers will demand a fancy office and issue a ban on the export of some random item and miserable dwarves go berserk. But that's about it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

falcor84 8y ago

I can also really relate. For me as a kid, the biggest such effect came from Might and Magic VI. It was such an expansive game - starting from fighting cave goblins with daggers and culminating, about two months later, with fighting dragons with laser blasters while flying (in 3D). It was so incredibly liberating and empowering compared to what I was doing at school at the time, and in hindsight did a lot to pull me into a career in coding.